THE RACHELEN PROJECT
HO CHI MINH CITY
The Rachel Project and the Helen Project
21st May 2016, 5pm
Everything that our friends predicted would happen to us while we're away has come true!
We've had the longest and most stressful bus journey we could have imagined; firstly, our 'night bus' pulled over in Phnom Penh at half past midnight for our driver to wake us all up and tell us we needed to change bus. We walked into a bus station half asleep where we were told that our connection bus wasn't due until 7am but we could sleep upstairs. Too tired to grumble we went upstairs to a small room of about 4 metres by 4 metres, with one bed and a couple of gym mats between about 15 of us. Helen and I shared a gym mat and refused the yellowing pillow offered to us; luckily I had a blanket on me.
At 7am we were woken up and ushered onto another bus. Most of us went back to sleep. A couple of hours after handing our passports to the driver, he came and asked Helen where her visa was. We explained that UK citizens don't need a visa for less than 15 days, so despite seeming unconvinced he shrugged it off and we arrived at the Vietnamese border at about midday.
Unfortunately the border staff didn't recognise Northern Ireland as part of the UK and refused entry to Helen. They then told me that I couldn't return to Cambodia because I'd already entered Vietnam, so Helen had to go back to the capital of Cambodia to apply for a visa while I had to go on to Ho Chi Minh City. Helen's bank card still isn't working so I gave her all of my emergency cash and sadly we parted ways.
Luckily everything went fairly smoothly from there. Helen got her visa in Phnom Penh but was forced to hand over $20 to a guy for showing her what to do. She missed the last same day bus back to the border and spent the night in an odd room in the bus station, and met me in Ho Chi Minh this afternoon.
I got to Ho Chi Minh last night and settled in the hostel. Nobody in my dorm wanted to socialise so I went to a couple of bars and looked at the markets. The exchange rate is about 30,000 Vietnamese dong to a pound; its very confusing - I withrew a million dong from an ATM thinking it would last me for the whole of Vietnam but it turns out that's about £30. hadn't eaten since Koh Rong so ordered a huge pile of noodles and some spring rolls. I then had curry in a vegetarian restaurant and went back to the hostel to have the best sleep of my life.
Today I went to the War Remnants museum. It was a pretty anti-US exhibition; very detailed and with more photographs of the Vietnamese war than I knew existed. An interesting part of the museum wad a collection of photos by several bystanding photographers; they collaborated to document the war regardless of whose side they were capturing or who was in the right. These photos are all part of a collection called Requiem, published by Random House. The war lasted for almost two decades, you could also see the time passing through the quality and style of the images.
A shocking part of it was the use of Agent Orange. This was a chemical weapon used by the US which still has repercussions today. Thousands of innocent children are still born with defects, and this has been happening since the end of the war. During the 17 years of the war, 2 million of the 3 million deaths were civilians.
I met Helen after this and we decided to treat ourselves with a Pizza Hut. It had been a long 48 hours. We had a flight booked at 4.20pm to Da Nang, which is halfway up Vietnam. As we only have 15 days with no visa here we don't want to spend all of our time on buses.
I got a motorbike back to the hostel to pick up my things. Getting a Pizza Hut and eating it slowly and leisurely was a mistake; at the time we didn't know we had the flight time wrong and our plane was taking off as we were in a taxi on our way to the airport.
This was the last thing we needed after the last two days! We found out we'd missed it while we were checking in. It had left over an hour ago at 2pm. There is another flight at 7.40pm which we've changed to for a small fee, so it's not too bad. We just have 5 hours to kill at the airport which is why I'm getting round to uploading all of these blog posts at once.
So we'll be departing Ho Chi Minh in a couple of hours. It's a shame Helen didn't get to see much of the city but we didn't anticipate spending so much time in Koh Rong, or the trouble with the visa.
Looking forward to spending a few days in one place!
Da Nang and Hoi An
24th May 2016, 6pm
We arrived in Da Nang at about 9pm after our flight was delayed by an hour. It’s a really nice city to drive around in, especially at night, as the river and beach were illuminated by amazing LEDs on the buildings.
There aren’t many people to socialise with in the city. It seemed to be a tourist destination for Chinese and Vietnamese people, but otherwise it’s mainly a gateway to get to Hoi An.
The next day we spent some time on the beach. It’s a huge stretch of sand which curves around to form a bay, with green mountains on the peninsula and a large illuminated Buddha statue, similar to Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, overlooking the city.
Later we decided to find somewhere to have a drink. We walked along the beach and came to an outdoor bar with live music and plenty of people milling around. It seemed like a good atmosphere so we went and got a drink. A waiter asked me if I’d had any of the free barbeque yet, and surprisingly, it was actually free. I got a bit plateful and sat down with Helen. While we were eating we realised that everyone seemed to know each other, and suddenly the music stopped and some speeches started. It turned out that we’d gatecrashed an annual stone skimming competition awards ceremony. It would have been too obvious to get up and leave so we sat through the presentation, clapping the winners and laughing when everyone else laughed. Once the speeches were over, we realised it was time to leave when the event host came and sat on our table.
We walked over to a few bars following some recommendations but they were all pretty empty. Walking past the beach later at night, it was surprising that it was very busy compared to earlier in the day. There’s a big golden bridge over the river dubbed ‘dragon bridge’ (it turns out this is because there’s a massive dragon head at one end, with humps in the middle and a tail at the other end). We heard it breathes fire at 9pm at weekends so we went to take a look. It was quite impressive and clearly quite a town event as there were lots of people out to see it.
The next morning we took a free bus to Hoi An, a nearby historic town. We met some Canadians and an American on the bus and shared a room with them at a hostel they recommended. It turned out it was a party hostel and it was pretty fun to just chill out for a while. One of the people we were with had a list of restaurants and market stalls he wanted to try so it was like having a personal food guide. We walked to a local restaurant and ate noodles before going to the ancient town of Hoi An which is still standing after 1000 years. It was beautiful and preserved, with greenery and lanterns all around, and brightly painted boats in the river. A butterfly landed on our friend’s knee.
We got a bus this morning and arrived in Hue this afternoon. There are some ancient buildings to look at here and also a good beach (so we’ve heard). The bus journey had some incredible views on the way. It started raining but it was still impressive and the clouds were lower than the mountains. Our driver was crazy and we nearly crashed several times, but he just laughed it off. We’ve had drivers like this more than once.We’re going to stay here for a couple of days and then hopefully go North to the Phong Nha cave. It feels a bit cooler here but that might just be because of the rain.